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WP Auto Noindex – WooCommerce indexing guidance

Which WooCommerce pages should be indexed, which should be noindexed, and how to keep Google focused on products and categories instead of system URLs.

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WooCommerce indexing guidance explains which WooCommerce URLs should be indexed, which should not, and how to keep Google focused on your money pages (products and categories) instead of thin system pages.

What should be indexed vs noindexed?

WooCommerce creates a mix of commercial pages and system pages. The commercial pages can rank and drive revenue. The system pages usually cannot and often create index bloat.

Keep these indexable

  • Product pages
  • Product category pages
  • Product tag pages only if you deliberately use them as landing pages
  • Brand pages if you use brands as an SEO landing page strategy

Noindex these system pages

  • Cart and Checkout
  • My Account pages (login, lost password, addresses, orders)
  • Wishlist pages (if you have them)
  • Compare pages (if you have them)
  • Filtered / faceted URLs when they generate lots of low-value combinations (especially if they’re parameter-based)
  • Internal search results (site search)

Why system pages should not be indexed

If WooCommerce system URLs are crawled and indexed, they can:

  • Create “Crawled – currently not indexed” noise in Search Console
  • Waste crawl budget on pages that don’t rank
  • Expose thin or duplicate templates to Google
  • Split internal link equity away from products and categories

WP Auto Noindex and WooCommerce

WP Auto Noindex is designed to be WooCommerce-aware. It can apply safe noindex,follow to common WooCommerce system pages while keeping products and categories indexable.

Recommended approach

  • Enable noindex for Cart, Checkout, and My Account
  • Keep product and category pages indexable
  • Only noindex taxonomies (tags/brands) if they are thin or not part of your strategy

Faceted navigation and filters

Filters and sorting can explode the number of crawlable URLs.

If your filters use query parameters

Examples: ?filter_color=black, ?orderby=price, ?min_price=10&max_price=50

  • Most filter combinations should be treated as non-indexable
  • Use noindex,follow on filter URLs unless you have a controlled landing page strategy
  • Avoid blocking these with robots.txt unless you have a clear reason, as blocking prevents link discovery

If your filters use clean URLs

Examples: /category/shoes/color/black/

  • Be careful: these look like real landing pages to Google
  • If you want them to rank, curate them (unique copy, internal links, stable set of products)
  • If you don’t want them to rank, apply noindex,follow

Pagination on category pages

Category pagination pages (page 2+) rarely deserve indexing on most stores.

  • Keep them crawlable (so Google can discover products)
  • But consider noindexing paginated pages to reduce index bloat

Search Console expectations

After applying sensible noindex rules on system pages, you should gradually see:

  • Fewer indexed low-value URLs
  • Cleaner Coverage and Pages reports
  • More crawl attention on products and categories

Next steps